Conditional Tags

[TechySP]

Can someone help me with the conditional tags. I want to know how are different outputs from a single source code interfaced with the application. Is there any parameter to be passed or is there any coding involved? If yes, what is it?

[RoboWizard]

Welcome to our community, Sonal

With Conditional Build Tags, you tag information to be excluded at the time you create your help output. So lets say you want an output for a US audience and one for a UK audience. You would have all the content in a single set of source files,k then generate two separate help systems.

If linking to an application, the application developer would need to know which help system to link to. That all falls squarely in the lap of the developer.

From what you asked, it would seem you believe information is tagged and parameters are passed from the application to use the build tags. That's not the way they work.

Cheers... Rick

[TechySP]

Thanks Rick for the instant reply, I knw how the conditional build tag feature works, but I wanted to knw how to hook the different outputs to the application? Is there any parameter that is passed or how?

[RoboWizard]

Hi again

I answered that by saying it's the application developer's job. There is nothing you can do from the help author's side to influence it.

I'm sure there are parameters involved in making a help call, but the application developer has to know what they would be. I believe they are different for each different programming language used.

* C
* C+
* C++
* C#
* Visual Basic

There are many many more.

Cheers... Rick

[TechySP]

Thanks Rick, Do u know any website where I can find this code?

[RoboWizard]

Hi again

Are you the application developer or the help author? If you are the application developer, you should already be aware of the codes you would need. If you are the help developer, you don't care about them as that's nothing for you to be concerned with.

If you are being asked by the application developer how to do this, s/he is asking you to do their job for them.

If you are still determined, you might try using the help system that ships with RoboHelp. Look at the section titled Context-sensitive Help. Inside that section is a section titled Information for Developers. Here is just one of the sample function calls: RH_ShowHelp(hParent, a_pszHelpFile, uCommand, dwData)

Cheers... Rick

Cheers... Rick

[Guest]

Hi,

In case this example helps, here's what our Java developers do in a general sense (and this is excluding context-sensitive help):

Say I have different outputs based on user roles, and I have used conditional tags to differentiate the outputs. Since the different outputs are in different directories, the developers code the help link to detect whatever role the user has, and then the corresponding help directory is dynamically inserted in the path in the help link. Thus, when the administrator clicks "Help," he gets the help in a directory that I may have called "admin."

If this thread is related to your other one about languages, in that case the code would detect the language that the user is viewing in and dynamically put the right directory structure in the help link path. (This would apply whether you had your languages in separate help projects or the same one.)

Hope that helps. But as Rick said, it's on the developers to figure out the specifics.

--Ben